The Ottawa Paramedic Service delivers medical treatments for life-threatening medical emergencies including heart attacks, strokes, respiratory and traumatic injuries. Serving an area of 2,796 sq. km., Ottawa's highly trained paramedics form an integral part of the city's emergency preparedness team and are the sole medically certified providers of out-of-hospital medical treatment in the region.

For Ottawa Paramedic, making decisions in seconds results in saving lives. To ensure paramedics, ambulance drivers, and doctors are best equipped to act, Ottawa engaged Qlik to help the entire ecosystem become more data driven through analytics. By undertaking a significant digital transformation that touched multiple stakeholders, hospital staff can now see things such as the number of incoming ambulances, projected offload delays, and how many paramedics have completed transfer of care and are on their way back out to the community, all in real time. With dashboards set up front and center in each of Ottawa’s adult hospitals, care workers can view previously unavailable information such as the number of ambulances or number of paramedics on the ground, utilizing data to more effectively attend to patients with speed.

“If we can choose the right hospital to transport a patient to, knowing how busy all the departments are, that in turn will, will bring ambulances back to the community faster.” – Greg Furlong, Deputy Chief of Ottawa Paramedic Service

Greg Furlong, Deputy Chief of Ottawa Paramedic Service and his team are tasked with collecting data around vital elements such as duration of processing emergency dispatch calls, ambulance response times to specific scenes, GPS systems in ambulances, and data from electronic medical records. By measuring and evaluating these data points, Ottawa Paramedic Service can better gauge performance and visualize ways to improve the service down to the most recent minute. The solution has also improved communication channels between hospitals for coordinated care and workload balance for care workers. Making data and analytics more accessible to the wider employee base has resulted in a significant cultural shift for Ottawa’s paramedics, police, and firefighters.

With Qlik, paramedic workers are more easily transporting patients to the right hospital, ensuring they’ll receive the fastest and appropriate care. With visibility into potential delays, workers can better plan patient resources, ensuring ambulances and paramedics are well equipped, and are ready for other emergency calls. This increases the paramedic service’s capacity and provide timely access to services to even more patients. With data more widely accessible, Ottawa Paramedic Service’s is furthering its mission, and ensuring its workers are data literate and empowered decision makers.

Read how @OttawaParamedic uses #analytics to ensure patients get the best care fast